One Night That Changes Everything (8 page)

I decide it’s time to change the subject.

“So you know people are already there, right?” I ask. “At your apartment, I mean.”

“Um …” she looks down at the ground and messes around with the bottom of the skirt she’s wearing. “Yeah, actually. Cooper’s watching it for me.”

“Oh,” I say. “Cool.” So that explains why he rushed out of the Spotted Frog so fast. He had a date to watch Isabella’s party. Like they’re married or something! He probably has a key and everything. Not only that, but I am now inadvertently following the person that I want to get away from and am going to have to see him and Isabella together, and he might think that I followed him there on purpose. Ugh, ugh, ugh. I make a mental note to kill Marissa.

“Yeah,” Isabella says. “I know you guys had a bad breakup and everything, but honestly things have been super-good with us ever since we’ve been hanging out.” That’s probably because their relationship is based on their, you know, actually
having
a relationship and not some dumb prank.

“That’s great,” I say, forcing myself to at least try and sound happy. Across the aisle, a man with a beard and cargo pants is ogling Isabella’s legs. She’s wearing a very short, glittery lavender skirt and gold platform shoes. What is up with everyone dressing like this in November? I guess on Saturday nights in the city sexiness trumps comfort.

“How’s Kate liking college?” Isabella asks, oblivious to the attention she’s getting.

“Um, she’s liking it,” I say. Which is true.

“That’s so great,” she says. “I can’t even
begin
to think about going to college, I mean, it’s going to be so crazy, it’s like …” Isabella starts chattering on and on, but I’m kind of tuning her out because I can’t stop thinking about her and Cooper. Does he love her? Has he
told
her he loves her? Are they going to get married? Have they had sex? My head is spinning with all these crazy thoughts, and so at first I don’t realize Isabella’s stopped talking and is now looking at me expectantly.

“Totally,” I say. “College is going to be crazy. I’m really glad we’re not seniors this year.” This is a lie, since suddenly I really want nothing more than to be out of this school and away from all these people, but something tells me Isabella wouldn’t really appreciate this sentiment.

“Totally,” she says, her eyes wide. She gets a very serious look on her face. “I just don’t understand those people who want to get out of here. It’s like, hello! Your classmates are the people you’ve grown up with, they’re part of your history!”

“Exactly,” I say, pretending I agree with her. The train stops, and Isabella hops right out of our car I pretend to be looking for something in my purse, hoping that maybe she’ll get lost in the crowd on the platform. But when I leave the train, Isabella’s there, waiting for me and smiling.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready,” I say. And then I follow her up the stairs and onto the street.

When we get to the party, Isabella waves and says, “See ya!” then disappears into the crowd of people in her living room. I’m insulted for a second, but then realize I can’t totally blame her. I mean, Isabella and I aren’t
really
friends. Unfortunately, I have only one friend here, and I don’t see her anywhere. In fact, the only people I see here are all of Isabella’s friends.

“Oh,” Jessica Adams says when she sees me. “Is Kate here?” She looks past me toward the door, as if the only reason I’d dare to show up at this party would be because my sister was with me.

“Uh, no,” I say. “She’s not.”

“Oh.” Jessica looks disappointed (a visit from Kate, a super-popular college girl who still gets talked about at our school even though she graduated last year, would make this
party the talk of the school on Monday), but she recovers quickly. “Well, there’s drinks in the kitchen.” She disappears down the stairs.

I pull my phone out and call Marissa. “Where. Are. You?” I ask when she answers. I can tell she’s here, because the sounds coming through the other end of my cell phone are the same things I can hear, namely people talking and music coming through an iPod that’s hooked up to the ginormous stereo system.

“Over in the corner, with Delia Carhart,” she says. I look over, spot them, and make my way through the crowd. No sign of Cooper or the 318s.

“Did you get it back?” Marissa asks when she sees me.

“No,” I say. “Although I did sing karaoke at the Spotted Frog.” I’m about to add, “with Cooper” but then realize that (a) I shouldn’t be talking about him since I don’t care if I did something with him, karaoke or otherwise, and (b) with Delia standing right here, it’s probably not a good idea to talk about it.

“I love that place, the Spotted Fraaahg,” Delia says, drawing the word out. “They have the best mocha lattes.”

“Yeah,” I say. Now that I think about it, I don’t like Delia that much. One time we had to be partners in history and she made me do the whole project by myself.

“That place is really fun,” Marissa says. Then she throws her head back and laughs, which is kind of weird, since it’s not that funny. But then I spot Jeremiah over in the corner, and I get it. She’s trying to act like we’re having such a great time
over here that she’s not even noticing that he’s there. Which is the oldest trick in the book, and so he can probably see right through it. Although maybe not. I don’t think Jeremiah Fisher is that bright. One time I had to explain to him what irony was, and he still didn’t get it.

“Anyway,” I say, “Marissa, come with me to get a drink.”

Delia gets the message and puts a pissed, put out sort of look on her face, but then turns around and goes off to bother someone else.

We head into the kitchen, where Marissa drinks a soda, and I look around for something a little stronger. I’m not that great with alcohol, and since I’ve already had a few sips of a cosmo, I need to be careful. I tend to get drunk very fast, probably because I don’t really drink that often. I spot a pitcher of something pink sitting on the counter next to a stack of plastic cups. Not just any plastic cups, though. They’re plastic cups with purple-and-aqua decals all over them. Of course Isabella would have cups like that.

I pour some of the pink liquid into the purple-and-aqua cup and hope that no one’s spiked it with a date-rape drug.

“So,” Marissa says. “Was he, you know, watching me?”

“Who?” I ask, frowning. I take a sip of the pink drink. Very strong, but very good, sweet and tangy. I take another sip. A small one.

“Jeremiah!” Marissa says. “Duh!” I notice she’s taken her sweater off and is now wearing just a light yellow halter top. Also, her shoulders look very sparkly.

“What’s all over your shoulders?” I ask, moving in for a closer look.

“Body sparkles,” she says. “I took them out of Isabella’s room.”

“Isabella already has a room here?” I ask.

“Yeah, totally,” she says. “With all her makeup, a fully stocked closet, everything.”

“That is so cool,” I say. Wow. I mean, how fun! To have your own apartment with, like, duplicates of all your stuff. Think about it. You could just come into the city to hang out anytime you want. I wonder just how popular Isabella would be if she didn’t have this apartment. Hmm. Probably still really popular, since she’s gorgeous.

“So was he?” Marissa asks.

“Was who what?” I take another sip of my drink, a bigger one this time. I’m starting to feel a little bit warm inside, and it feels good, but I know enough to realize that there’s a fine line between feeling all warm and good inside and ending up puking into the bushes while people shake their head sadly at you and mumble things about how you can’t hold your liquor. Not that that’s happened to me before. But I do know some people it
has
happened to, cough, Jeremiah, cough.

“Was. Jeremiah. Watching. Me.” She takes the cup I’m holding out of my hand and pours its contents down the sink.

“Hey!” I say. “What’d you do that for?” I watch sadly as the pink liquid goes pouring down the drain, circling around and then disappearing forever.

“Because you’re having problems paying attention to the conversation already,” she says.

“No, I’m not,” I say, shocked.

She looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

“Okay, well, maybe I am, but that’s just because I’m a little bit distracted,” I say. “Not because I’m getting drunk.” It’s totally true, too. I’m distracted by the fact that my life is about to be over, not because of the alcohol. “I only had two sips,” I point out.

She hands me a soda, and at the same time, I feel my phone vibrating in my bag.

“Oh, God,” I say, feeling nervous. I pull my cell out and look at the screen. One new text. From Tyler. “
ATTEMPT TO MAKE OUT WITH NIGEL RICKSON.
”

“Oh. My. God,” I say.

“What is it?” Marissa asks. “Is it from Cooper?”

“No,” I say. “It’s from Tyler.” I show her the screen.

“Oh my God,” she says.

“I know!” Okay, deep breaths. I will NOT freak out. Marissa doesn’t say anything, just pours me another pink drink into a plastic cup. I take a sip, but it’s totally lost its luster. Also now I have to be afraid of possibly maybe puking all over Nigel Rickson if I try to kiss him and am too drunk.

“Why would they …” Marissa starts, frowning. “I mean, how did they … ?”

“I wrote it down,” I say. “In my notebook.”

“Right,” Marissa says. She looks at the floor.

Here’s the deal with Nigel Rickson: I used to be in love with him. And when I say,
in love with him
, I (obviously) mean from afar. He’s from England and he showed up at our school freshman year with this totally sexy British accent. He was into all this weird hip-hop music and he wore baggy clothes and had braces which totally somehow worked on him and made him seem very badass. Like how some rappers have gold teeth?

Anyway, the braces are long gone, but the hip-hop clothes are still there, and Nigel Rickson and his friends still walk down the hallways at school listening to underground hip-hop on their iPods and spend their weekends scouting artists for the record label Nigel is going to start one day.

My crush on Nigel was one of those crushes that at the time was super-strong, until one day I had Clarice ask Nigel what he thought of me, and he seemed kind of clueless as to who I was, and it made me really upset and I spent all of the next week obsessing over him and listening to sad love songs in my room.

And after that, I was pretty much over him. Although sometimes when we’re in a class together I’ll find myself staring at him and sort of daydreaming about what it would be like to make out with him. Also, one time I kind of saw that he has a little bit of hair on his stomach, like this little trail that sort of goes from his belly button, um, down, and you’d think that would seem really gross, but it wasn’t, it was super-sexy and made my head get all wobbly and I almost passed out in gym
class. Of course, that could have been because we were running the mile that day, but I don’t think so.

Anyway, up until Cooper, I guess you could say he was my longest crush. Like, of course I’d had crushes on guys after that and before that, but Nigel is the one who I’ve always kind of come back to. Until Cooper, and then I kind of forgot that Nigel existed.

Isn’t that funny? Or maybe even ironic? I mean, now they want me to try to make out with Nigel, and it shouldn’t even be that scary, because I don’t like him anymore, but it still is pretty scary because it means I have to, you know, try to get him to kiss me.

“You’ll be fine,” Marissa says. Her voice sounds confident, but her face doesn’t look so sure.

“Where is he?” I ask. “Have you seen him?”

“Yeah, he’s in the corner, with some of his friends. They were playing craps or something on the floor.”

“They were playing what?”

“Craps, you know?” She mimes throwing something. “Like with dice.”

Oh. Great. Not only do I have to figure out a way to get him to make out with me, but now I have to compete with gambling? There’s no way I’m going to win that battle.

“Give me your iPhone,” I demand.

Marissa hands it over. I scroll through her apps until I find Pandora. If I’m going to do this, I at least need something to talk to him about. I’ll find a good rap artist, listen to some
songs, and use that as a conversation opener. But in my heightened state of despair, the only rap artists I can think of are mainstream rap artists. Which is fine, but I need something more impressive. Something that will make him think we have a connection, me and Nigel, two rap aficionados.

“What are some underground Boston rap artists’ names?” I ask Marissa.

She looks at me. “Are you seriously asking me that?”

Hmmm. I rack my brain, trying to remember at least one person or group. I should be able to. I mean, when I was a freshman I totally spent a whole weekend scouring the internet for local Boston rap artists so that I could impress Nigel with my knowledge in study hall the next day. Of course, I chickened out and didn’t talk to him, but still. Damn. What was that one guy’s name? Mr. something. Or maybe it was a group? That’s the other problem with underground rappers, you can never tell from their names if they’re solo artists or groups.

“Mr. Rift!” I scream. “That’s the name of that one guy, Mr. Rift!” I start plugging it into Marissa’s phone.

“Mr. Rift,” Marissa says thoughtfully. She takes another sip of her drink. “I like it. It sounds kind of … old school. But hip.”

I don’t ask her what she means by that, because I’m still looking for songs to listen to and because Cooper picks that moment to come waltzing into the kitchen like an asshole.

“Oh,” he says, when he sees me and Marissa.

“Oh?” Marissa says, looking at him coolly. “Is that really all you have to say for yourself?” She crosses her arms, like
maybe she might be ready to fight. Which is crazy. Marissa never fights. Well. Except for one time in seventh grade when Meredith Cosanti stole her sports bras and wouldn’t admit it. But that was junior high, everyone was fighting in junior high.

“Marissa,” I say, warning her. I’m plugging
Mr. Rift
into Pandora, but it’s not coming up. “Is there any other way to spell
rift
?” I ask.